国外关于经济增长的政治学研究综述

本文运用文献分析法,从政策选择与政治条件两个维度来梳理国外关于经济增长的政治学理论,并在各维度内对已有文献的观点进行分类归纳。结合文献梳理的成果,笔者提出关于经济增长的政治学研究范式的一些思考。     

Economic grievances and political protest

How do economic grievances affect citizens’ inclination to protest? Given rising levels of inequality and widespread economic hardship in the aftermath of the Great Recession, this question is crucial for political science: if adverse economic conditions depress citizens’ engagement, as many contributions have argued, then the economic crisis may well feed into a crisis of democracy. However, the existing research on the link between economic grievances and political participation remains empirically inconclusive. It is argued in this article that this is due to two distinct shortcomings, which are effectively addressed by combining the strengths of political economy and social movement theories. Based on ESS and EU-SILC data from 2006–2012, as well as newly collected data on political protest in 28 European countries, a novel, more fine-grained conceptualisation of objective economic grievances considerably improves our understanding of the direct link between economic grievances and protest behaviour. While structural economic disadvantage (i.e., the level of grievances) unambiguously de-mobilises individuals, the deterioration of economic prospects (i.e., a change in grievances) instead increases political activity. Revealing these two countervailing effects provides an important clarification that helps reconcile many seemingly conflicting findings in the existing literature. Second, the article shows that the level of political mobilisation substantially moderates this direct link between individual hardship and political activity. In a strongly mobilised environment, even structural economic disadvantage is no longer an impediment to political participation. There is a strong political message in this interacting factor: if the presence of organised and visible political action is a decisive signal for citizens that conditions the micro-level link between economic grievances and protest, then democracy itself – that is, organised collective action – can help sustain political equality and prevent the vicious circle of democratic erosion.     

Varieties of Limited Access Orders: The nexus between politics and economics in hybrid regimes

This article advances our understanding of differences in hybrid stability by going beyond existing regime typologies that separate the study of political institutions from the study of economic institutions. It combines the work of Douglass North, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast (NWW) on varieties of social orders with the literature on political and economic regime typologies and dynamics to understand hybrid regimes as Limited Access Orders (LAOs) that differ in the way dominant elites limit access to political and economic resources. Based on a measurement of political and economic access applied to seven post‐Soviet states, the article identifies four types of LAOs. Challenging NWW's claim, it shows that hybrid regimes can combine different degrees of political and economic access to sustain stability. Our typology allows to form theoretical expectations about the kinds of political and/or economic changes that will move different types of LAOs toward more openness or closure.     

Political freedom, economic freedom, and income convergence: Do stages of economic development matter?

In the literature, theory and empirical evidence on the nexus of political freedom, economic freedom, and economic growth are mixed. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the effect of political freedom on promoting economic growth is realized and detectable at later stages of social and economic development. Using panel data for a sample of 104 countries between 1970 and 2003, we find strong support for our hypothesis. While economic freedom has greater effects on income convergence in the OECD countries, political freedom clearly promotes the convergence among those OECD countries.     

Politics and Economic Growth

Traditional growth theory viewed economic growth as a resultant of economic factors, in particular capital investment. Development economics implied a broader approach, emphasizing social structure change and human capital. Finally, it was also hinted that political factors could influence the rate of change in the development of the economic system. Testing various theories of economic growth we find that institutional sclerosis is the basic political factor that is related to the process of economic growth. The next step is to analyse how political structures and public policy have an impact on the basic factor in economic growth, viz. investments.     

Accepting the Bargain? An Experimental Study of Political Rights, Economic Development and Support for Government in Rural China

All governments are dependent upon a degree of political support and legitimacy. Some authoritarian countries, like Singapore and China, have staked this legitimacy on an “authoritarian bargain” in which residents exchange their political rights for economic growth and development. However, this bargain is complicated in the Chinese countryside, where rural residents have been granted a key political right – the right to participate in the election of their local leadership. In this paper, we ask whether rural residents have accepted the authoritarian bargain, and base their political support solely on economic development, or whether rural residents also consider their political rights when evaluating government. Based on an experimental study conducted in rural China, we find that rural residents place equal importance on their political rights and economic development when assessing their support for government.     

Economic influences on presidential popularity among key political and socioeconomic groups: A review of the evidence and some new findings

This paper analyzes presidential popularity among important political and socioeconomic groups in the United States from 1965 to 1980, making use of the Gallup Poll indicators of support for the incumbent president among the main socioeconomic, regional, generational, sexual, and racial groups, and among Democratic, Republican, and independent voters. The analysis allows fully for both economic and noneconomic influences on incumbent popularity and includes in an integrated rational model underlying partisan orientations. The conclusions suggest the strong importance of partisanship, with the public's political response to the economy depending largely on the political affiliation of the incumbent president. Beyond this, we find economic predictors generally are more important than any of the systematic political or cyclical predictors tested here, with unemployment the single most important influence on presidential popularity. For all presidents, macroeconomic conditions have greater political significance than do the government's redistributive policies designed to influence economic well-being. And with minor exceptions, the economy's political importance is equally strong for all economic classes in American society.     

The Impact of Economic Performance on Electoral Support in Sweden, 1967–1978*

This article investigates the impact of macroeconomic conditions on aggregate political support for governing parties in Sweden over the period 1967–1978. After reviewing survey evidence on the relative salience of economic and fiscal issues to the Swedish electorate, a novel, dynamic model of political support is presented. The model incorporates the ideas that voters evaluate economic performance relatively rather than absolutely, and that governments' mass political support is based on their cumulative performance records. The empirical results supply estimates of the impact of unemployment, inflation, the real income growth rate and the income effects of direct tax and transfer policies on political support. The evidence suggests that the responses of political support to reasonable movements in macroeconomic conditions are large enough to give economic management a pivotal role in electoral shifts.     

Predispositions and the Political Behavior of American Economic Elites: Evidence from Technology Entrepreneurs

Economic elites regularly seek to exert political influence. But what policies do they support? Many accounts implicitly assume economic elites are homogeneous and that increases in their political power will increase inequality. We shed new light on heterogeneity in economic elites' political preferences, arguing that economic elites from an industry can share distinctive preferences due in part to sharing distinctive predispositions. Consequently, how increases in economic elites' influence affect inequality depends on which industry's elites are gaining influence and which policy issues are at stake. We demonstrate our argument with four original surveys, including the two largest political surveys of American economic elites to date: one of technology entrepreneurs—whose influence is burgeoning—and another of campaign donors. We show that technology entrepreneurs support liberal redistributive, social, and globalistic policies but conservative regulatory policies—a bundle of preferences rare among other economic elites. These differences appear to arise partly from their distinctive predispositions.     

The two freedoms,economic growth and development: An empirical study

Log-linear methods are applied to categorical data containing economic freedom, political freedom, the level of income, and the rate of economic growth for a panel of about 100 countries from 1975 to 1992. The main results are: given economic freedom, the rate of economic growth is independent of political freedom and the level of income; given the level of income, political freedom is independent of economic freedom and the growth rate. The analysis suggests the fundamental effects of economic freedom in fostering economic growth, and a high level of income as the condition of a high degree of political freedom.     

Economic aspirations, well-being and political support in recession and boom periods: the case of West Germany

Abstract. Usually the aggregate over-time relationship between economics and politics is empirically reduced to a simple one equation regression model which specifies political support as the dependent, and several economic indicators as independent variables. Here more comprehensive causal model is tested for West Germany. Economic aspirations, personal well-being, fear of the direct effects of economic crisis and political demands are introduced as intervening causal structures between the state of the economy and political support. It is demonstrated that the strength of the relationship between the economy and political support is quite different in recession and boom periods, depending on the subjective importance of economic concerns and the degree of fear of losing one's job. As the analysis of four different economic periods reveals, the effects of inflation and unemployment on political support are strongest when these indicators have an upward tendency. If they are stationary at a low or a higher level, their influences disappear.     

Economic Crisis and Levels of Political Participation in Europe (2002–2010): The Role of Resources and Grievances

This article examines the effect of the recent economic crisis on political participation levels in Europe. As the civic voluntarism model and grievances theory predict different effects of economic downturn on political participation, the crisis provides a unique context to evaluate the explanatory power of these two theories. It is found that, when investigating a period of eight years (2002–2010), economic growth is positively associated with non-institutionalised political participation, which is in line with the civic voluntarism model. However, when focusing on the changes in political participation that occurred between 2008 and 2010 it is found that rising unemployment is associated with rising levels of non-institutionalised political participation, suggesting that grievance theory is especially useful in exceptionally negative conditions as suddenly imposed grievances can lead to various forms of protest behaviour. The article argues that these shock experiences can lead to momentary peak periods of mobilisation.     

In the Aftermath of Earth,Wind, and Fire: Natural Disasters and Respect for Women’s Rights

Though much research has been devoted to a range of socioeconomic and political consequences of natural disasters, little is known about the possible gendered effects of disasters beyond the well-documented immediate effects on women’s physical well-being. This paper explores the extent to which natural disasters affect women’s economic and political rights in disaster-hit countries. We postulate that natural disasters are likely to contribute to the rise of systematic gendered discrimination by impairing state capacity for rights protection as well as instigating economic and political instability conducive to women’s rights violations. To substantiate the theoretical claims, we combine data on women’s economic and political rights with data on nine different natural disaster events—droughts, earthquakes, epidemics, extreme temperatures, floods, slides, volcanic eruptions, windstorms, and wildfires. Results from the data analysis for the years 1990–2011 suggest that natural disasters have a detrimental effect on the level of respect for both women’s economic and political rights. One major policy implication of our findings is that disasters could be detrimental to women’s status beyond the immediate effects on their personal livelihoods, and thus, policymakers, relief organizations, and donors should develop strategies to prevent gendered discrimination in the economy and political sphere in the affected countries.     

Political competition and economic performance: evidence from the Italian regions

We verify the predictions of the theoretical literature on the relationship between political competition and economic performance, holding that, when the predominance of an ideological dimension creates a political rent, the party exploiting it selects lower quality politicians whose policy choices worsen economic performance. We examine the sample of 15 Italian Regions from 1980 to 2002 that exploits the institutional reforms of 1995 as an exogenous shock to pre-existing rents. We find evidence that higher political competition improves economic performance, through the choice of more efficiency-oriented policies.     

Political liberty and social development: An empirical investigation

Liberty is not only economic; it is political. Whether the economic system promotes social development is one question. Whether the political system promotes social development is another question. The empirical investigations indicate that for the world political liberty has a small, though significant relationship with the level of social development.By investigating groupings of alternative economic systems, it is clear that global policies to increase political liberty will not necessarily bring about desired results. In the Socialist, Mixed Socialist, and Capitalist-Statist countries political liberty appears to have virtually no relationship with social development. An increase in political liberty without an increase in economic liberty is even associated with lower levels of social development.     

Parties, media, the public and the economy: Patterns of societal agenda-setting

Abstract. The aim of this study is to assess the relative strength of the reciprocal causal relationships between the political agenda (the party agenda), the mass media agenda and the public agenda. Although the research literature is rather confusing and inconclusive, three causal patterns have often been suggested. The economic theory of representative democracy ('public choice' theory) assumes bottom-up agenda-setting. The political agenda is assumed to respond to the public agenda. However, theories on political communication suggest top-down agenda-setting. The political agenda would set the media agenda, which in turn would set the public agenda. The central tenet of mediacracy theory is the proposition that the media agenda sets both the public agenda and the political agenda. This article uses data on economic issues in the Netherlands in the period 1980–1986 and linear structural equations models to test these three causal patterns. The results warrant both bottom-up and top-down agenda-setting, but the mediacracy model is rejected. The conclusion should be that the economic theory of democracy, which prevails in the political science journals, has to incorporate findings from political communication research.     

Waiting for privatization in developing countries: Towards the integration of economic and non-economic explanations

The intention of this paper is to examine the political and administrative limits on the effective implementation of privatization in developing countries and so to present a challenge to the view that slow progress is primarily attributable to economic constraints. After examining these economic aspects, the paper provides an explanatory framework which incorporates those political and administrative processes central to an understanding of what happens to state economic policies in practice. The significance of these processes is demonstrated by drawing on research material from India, Pakistan, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. The conclusion drawn is that responses to pressures for economic reform will be determined, not so much by economic criteria as by the political and bureaucratic resources available to decision makers. Since policy processes in developing countries show considerable variety it is likely that there will be substantial variations in the practical achievement of privatization objectives.     

The hazard rate of political regimes

We present a preliminary study on the stability of political regimes. In a longitudinal data set we study the effect of some observable economic and political conditions on the hazard rate of different types of political regimes. We find that economic development has a stabilizing effect in countries with democratic political institutions, but rich autocracies do not show a lower hazard rate than less developed autocracies. While the stability of autocracies is not affected by their degree of economic development, it is greatly associated with the degree of popular discontent. Widespread discontent with leaders in autocratic regimes highly increases their hazard rate. This relationship is much weaker for regimes with democratic institutions. We also find a non-monotonic time dependence pattern for the hazard rate of political regimes. Political regimes are found to be at an increasing risk of collapse during the first years, with their hazard rates reaching a peak around the fourth year.     

Democracy and modern political community: limits and possibilities

There are various limits to what is politically possible. The exigencies of economic production and exchange represent one crucial limit to possible political structures. Inherited Marxist and liberal conceptions of the relation between economic systems and political structures are incoherent; these relations need to be reconceived, yet recent socialist political thinking has preferred to focus mainly on the political domain, pursuing a theory of self-governing community. Can there today be a coherent account of such a theory? One way of showing there cannot is by pressing the question of the contours an dsubstance of modern political community. Optimistic theorists of self-governing community rely on a self-enclosed, determinate conception of community that has its imaginative roots in a vision of ancient liberty: the demos exercising legitimate and effective agency over a particular territory. But modern political community cannot be conceived of in this way: because of the presence of global processes of economic causality, there is today no fit between the territorial identity of a political community and its effective powers of agency. Modern liberty (unlike its ancient counterpart) has no specific or determinate location: its availability depends upon an elaborate division of economic and political labour. In these circumstances, it no longer makes sense to heighten the stakes of membership in a political community, as optimistic theorists of democracy do when they call for a more active and participatory civil society. The for appraising what forms of the division of political labour may be legitimate.